Would you spend $4.95 on a bar of soap when you can buy six for less than $2?

And what are you really buying?

More than ever before consumers are being asked to think about how they spend their money at the checkout, while retailers can no longer ignore the supply chain for their products.

At The Body Shop, a $4.95 bar of olive soap is not the cheapest option, but the retailer argues the community trade soap may be the more ethical option; made of organic olive oil from a co-operative in south-west Italy, and certified sustainable palm oil.

Today's globalised retail economy has given ethics a permanent place in the shopping trolley of many consumers, but for others price still comes first.

In the heart of Vietnam's Khe Nuoc Trong forest, shopping trolleys and checkouts are of another world.

Retaining just 30 per cent of its original natural vegetation, the 20,000-hectare evergreen lowland forest is considered a biodiversity hot spot, with at least 1500 plant species found nowhere else on the planet.

The region is home to the endangered red-shanked douc, a colobine monkey lauded by conservationists and poachers alike, while illegal loggers see centuries-old trees simply as timber for trade.

Khe Nuoc Trong's declining environmental profile has become a focus for local Vietnamese conservation groups, boosted by support from the global not-for-profit World Land Trust.

But it is global beauty brand The Body Shop that believes it can spread the story of Khe Nuoc Trong around the world and into the minds of consumers at the checkout.

Making a difference

When Anita Roddick started The Body Shop in Brighton in 1976, she did so with her mother's frugal war-time habits in mind.

"Why waste a container when you can refill it? And why buy more of something than you can use? ... We reused everything, we refilled everything and we recycled all we could," she wrote on her website. Roddick died after a major brain haemorrhage in 2007 but her ethos of ethical consumerism has lived on.

In February this year The Body Shop announced its aim to become "the world's most ethical and truly sustainable global business", a goal so ambitious it should be taken with a rational dose of scepticism.

"Well, it's a brave goal … an enormous challenge," says Roger Wilson, senior conservationist with the World Land Trust.

Whether such a goal is even possible and the criteria involved, Wilson says, "the public will decide".

"It will always be the public. I think that's the only answer, " he says.

The Body Shop's goal forms part of its 2013 Enrich Not Exploit Commitment, a pledge encompassing 14 measurable targets, one of which is to protect and regenerate 75 million square metres of damaged habitat. Such regeneration projects will work as carbon offsets until the company reaches its goal of powering its stores with 100 per cent renewable energy,

The first destination in the Bio-Bridges project is Vietnam's Khe Nuoc Trong forest, where one square metre of threatened rainforest will be restored for every purchase made in a store. Driven by a keenly felt sense of corporate social responsibility, The Body Shop plans to restore 14.5 million square metres of the Khe Nuoc Trong forest.

According to the Australian Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility, the idea of "corporate social responsibility" is generally understood as "a response to business failures that have accompanied the astonishing growth in size, impact and power of modern corporations".

Multinational Unilever is often cited for its successful policies in this area, many of which have become ingrained in the company's operations. For instance, its 10-year Sustainable Living Plan, created in 2010, was built on the idea that the growth of the business need not incur greater environmental costs.  Since its launch it has reduced manufacturing carbon dioxide emissions by 39 per cent per tonne of production, and cut waste sent to landfill by 97 per cent per tonne of production.

Ikea, too, has had made its own mark with corporate social responsibility initiatives, switching to LED lighting in all its stores and installing one of the largest rooftop solar energy systems in Australia, in 2014.

However the concept has also been subject to scepticism and failure; think Volkswagen's emissions control scandal involving its supposedly environmentally conscious cars.

In the 20 years Wilson has worked with the World Land Trust, he has seen countless well-known brands and companies commit to conservation initiatives. Indeed, around 70 per cent of the funding for the not-for profit comes from corporate social responsibility initiatives.

Wilson says he has witnessed initiatives go wrong when they are seen solely as a "superficial marketing tool".

"I do a lot of reforestation work around the world … and at a new site being proposed in Kenya, I saw something like three reforestation projects had been started on the same block of land," he said.

"It was clear companies had only paid up to the point of putting the tree in the ground and then walked away from it."
 

Biodiversity key

Where thick, lush swaths of green characterise Khe Nuoc Trong forest, so, too, do empty hills exhibiting the continued effects of the pernicious Agent Orange, used during the Vietnam War.

And yet sections of the 20,000-hectare forest remain so rich in biodiversity that Vietnamese ecologist Pham Tuan Anh thinks of it as a "hidden beauty, a sleeping beauty".

Pham is the president and deputy director of Viet Nature, the local conservation group at the centre of the collaboration between The Body Shop and World Land Trust in Quang Binh Province.

"Conservation is a new concept for a country like Vietnam," she says. "It was just introduced in the late '80s, early '90s by international conservation groups … and when many people think about the forest they still think about the timber only."

Poachers and illegal loggers continue to pose the biggest threats to the forest itself and its endangered inhabitants, such as the red-shanked douc and the saola. Now considered one of the rarest mammals in the world, the saola has not been sighted since 2014; some estimate only 250 remain.

In an attempt to act on the area's failing biodiversity, The Body Shop committed to the Bio-Bridges initiative, making an initial investment of £130,000.

The financial support is crucial in a country like Vietnam, where resources are limited, Pham said. "But I want to emphasise it isn't always donations we need. We need things like natural ingredients sourcing [programs]."

At the end of last year The Body Shop completed plant species mapping of the area, to survey potential ingredients that could be used in future products, with a view to establishing a community trade partnership with the region.

But The Body Shop's international corporate responsibility manager Kate Upshon said there would be a minimum of three years between species mapping and an ingredient being available for use in production.

"We are now at the next stage of testing … for efficacy, quality and properties within those ingredients," she said.

Until natural ingredients sourcing becomes a reality in the area, The Body Shop's focus is on reaching its goal to protect 75 million square metres of the region. At the end of June the company reported there had been more than 2 million transactions since the launch.

Attitude shift

In a 60-country survey of 30,000 consumers last year, Nielsen found 66 per cent of respondents were willing to pay more for products and services that came from companies committed to positive social and environmental impact, up from 50 per cent in 2013.

Gordon Renouf, deputy chair of the Consumers Federation of Australia and co-founder of the Good On You ethical shopping app, puts the shift down to globalisation.

"A more connected world means people hear about appalling labour conditions, deaths in unsafe factories, the impact of chemical pollution and animal cruelty."

The United Nations and the global peak body for consumer organisations Consumers International, recognise eight consumer rights, including the right to safety and the right to choose.

But  Renouf said consumers needed a ninth right: "the right to consume responsibly".

"We need this ninth right to do justice to modern consumers' aspirations. We don't stand for companies hiding product defects ... lying about their compliance ... and more and more, we don't stand for companies that won't tell us what's going on in their supply chains."

Brands like Patagonia, People Tree in the UK, Kowtow in New Zealand and Etiko in Australia have become well-recognised leaders in the sustainable fashion market.

Renouf said even "mega clothing brands" are starting to take steps in the right direction, such as Adidas, Zara and H&M, but admits "there is still a long long way to go before you could call them ethical or even fully transparent".

So, when it comes to the beauty sector, do consumers really care where their products are sourced?

The Body Shop's Upshon says "the answer is a straight-up yes".

"It's the consumers who have made sure The Body Shop is still here 40 years on," she says. "A large majority of our customers make purchases because [they care about] the sustainability efforts we make."

Consumers certainly cared when The Body Shop agreed to a £652.3 million acquisition by French beauty brand L'Oreal in 2006. The takeover attracted criticism from loyal customers of the brand, who felt the L'Oreal brand did not align with ethical direction followed by The Body Shop.

There was also controversy in 2014, when consumer group Choice revealed that the brand, through L'Oreal, was expanding into mainland China, where consumer safety laws require all imported cosmetic products to undergo animal testing.It prompted the brand to "temporarily remove" its products from sale in China. 

Consumer pressure

Ikea, Unilever, Interface. These global brands are just a blip on the radar of large, multinational companies for whom social and environmental initiatives have become a necessity.

It is a sign that, while social responsibility is expensive to implement, "it is too expensive not to", says Dr Tracy Wilcox, senior lecturer at the University of New South Wales Business School.

"For these companies it is embedded in what they do and they are doing fine," she says. "There might be short-term costs, as you try to change a culture, but in the medium to long-term it is almost a must-have."

A McKinsey Global survey of 340 companies last year found "more than 90 per cent could point to a specific event ... such as consumer pressure ... that directly triggered their commitment to sustainability".

More than 40 per cent of companies surveyed by McKinsey said business and growth opportunities triggered their sustainability programs.

"A lot of research actually shows that [sustainability practices within a business] actually improve a brand's image, its customer loyalty, trust and employee commitment," Wilcox says.

"There's an old saying, "it's not how a firm spends its money that determines whether it is socially responsible, it is how it makes its money".

Lucy Cormack travelled to Vietnam as a guest of The Body Shop.

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